BIRKENHEAD EPIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1938, Page 9

BIRKENHEAD EPIC

MEMORIAL PLAQUE UNVEILED. AN HISTORIC CEREMONY. CAPE TOWN. The lonely and historic headland of Danger Point, 115 miles from Capetown, was the scene of a service as impressive as any in the days when the early Portuguese navigators plante‘d their “Padraos" on the promontories of a barbaric South Africa. At 10.30 a.m. Vice-Admiral Sir Francis L. Tottenham, Commander-in-Chief of the Africa Station, in the presence of the biggest crowd that has ever gathered on the lonely headland, unveiled a bronze plaque to the Birkenhead. The plaque, which has been formally taken over by the Historic Monuments Commission as a national monument, is the culmination of a movement which began in 1886 for a proper memorial to those men who, by their behaviour when their troopship, the Birkenhead, broke her back and sank within sight of Danger Point on February 26, 1852, gave to the Eng-lish-speaking world one of the finest of British military and maritime traditions. Long before the service a crowd of 700 people had gathered on the small eminence of Danger Point round the lighthouse, into the wall of which the plaque has beep fixed. The Ven H. A. Earp Jones, Archdeacon of Caledon, and R.N.V.R. chaplain, opened the memorial service with prayer. Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Totenham then drew back the Union Jack and the White Ensign which covered the plaque. The unveiling of the plaque was followed by the laying of wreaths by members of many patriotic and other societies. Colonel C. Graham Botha, Union Archivist and member of the Historic Monuments Commission, formally accepted custody of the memorial on behalf of the commission. In handing it over, Captain C. Struben, chairman of the Navy League of South Africa, told the story of the efforts which had been made to commemorate fittingly the Birkenhead epic.